Poetry is what gets lost in translation-Robert Frost

July 31, 2017

Mikazuki is a Hiroshima style restaurant in Koenji that is reasonably priced and has an authentic taste.

Erengi mushrooms cooked on the pan.

There was a nice selection of nihonshu as well.

Hiroshima style okonomiyaki is notable for the inclusion of soba noodles in the mix-we ordered kimchi, cheese, and pork. I had been wanting to eat this since reading about Hiroshima style okonomiyaki in Rice, Noodle, Fish, a book I read earlier this year.

The Keepers (2017) directed by Ryan White is the latest Netflix true crime miniseries, much like The Making of a Murderer. Much like that miniseries it leaves the viewer with more questions than answers, but this one is distinctly different from its predecessor. It is the story of a beloved nun, Sister Cathy Cesnik, who was brutally murdered in 1969 and was never solved. Two former students, Gemma Hoskins and Abbie Fitzgerald Schaub-who are now retired, are armchair detectives who are trying to solve the cold case. However, one of the biggest revelations was that one of the priests at the school, Father Maskell, was a serial pedophile that abused scores of students in his career. This leads to the discovery of the Catholic cover ups of the late 60s and 70s that began to be exposed in the in the 90s as victims came forward with their repressed memories. I can remember reading about the cover ups in Rolling Stone magazine when I was going to community college and living at home in the late 80s. It was very troubling for me since I had attended a catholic grade school, served as an altar boy, and my mother was an Eucharistic minister with strong ties to the church. In fact she cut the hair of nuns, priests, and deacons. I confronted a lay deacon, Father Craig, about it once when he was getting a haircut and his answers were troubling-he said that they would give counseling to the offender and then move them to a new parish-where they had a new batch of innocent children to molest. To this day it makes blood boil, the hypocrisy of it. Spotlight is powerful film about the scandals that rocked Boston in the 90s as well. Later, it would turn out there was a scandal in Spokane, but not at the parish I attended. But one nearby and effected an acquaintance of mine and his brother committed suicide over the scandal when the scandal surfaced. My acquaintance got a large settlement from the Catholic church. The series leaves some loose ends untied, but I think that is the nature of these old cold cases. A mostly fascinating story of murder and a large scale cover up of child abuse at the hands of priests and other men of power in Baltimore.

I find the films of Sam Peckinpah fascinating and Straw Dogs (1971) is no exception. This is Peckinpah's mediation on violence in man and society. A mathematician, David Sumner (Dustin Hoffman) is escaping the violence of the 60s in America to retire in a small Scottish village with his newly-wed nubile bride, Amy (Susan George). There is strife in their marriage as she doesn't get as much attention form her husband as wants and taunts her sexuality to the roughnecks working on the roof of their garage. The climax of the film is a controversial rape in which Amy is not completely unpleasurable to her. Most of the violence takes place at the end of the film as David tries to defends his wife and home from a mob of drunken villagers. Pauline Kael has called it "the first American film that is a fascist work of art." The Criterion treatment includes: audio commentary from 2003 by Stephen Prince, author of Savage Cinema: Sam Peckinpah and the Rise of Ultraviolent Movies, Mantrap: Straw Dogs The Final Cut, a 2003 documentary about the making of the film, featuring cast and crew, Sam Peckinpah: Man of Iron, a 1993 documentary about the director featuring actors Kris Kristofferson, Jason Robards, Ali MacGraw, and many others, new conversation between film critic Michael Sragow and filmmaker Roger Spottiswoode, who worked as one of the editors on the film, new interview with film scholar Linda Williams about the controversies surrounding the film, archival interviews with actor Susan George, producer Daniel Melnick, and Peckinpah biographer Garner Simmons, behind-the-scenes footage, TV spots and trailers, and an essay by scholar and critic Joshua Clover.

July 27, 2017

Today I went to the Tokyo National Museum in Ueno to see an exhibition on Thai art, Thailand: The Brilliant Land Of Buddha. It was an entertaining exhibition-the coolest thing was samurai swords cased in Thai decorated fittings.

The approved photo of a temple door-otherwise photos were prohibited.

A Japanese vendor was selling Thai coffee from the highlands of northern Chaing Mai on the museum grounds.

Jeff Orlowski's Netflix documentary, Chasing Coral (2017) got inspiration from the similarly themed film Chasing Ice (2012) about capturing melting glaciers. Coral is an unsettling film in which they the extraordinary beauty of the reefs are highlighted and contrasted with the dead coral-seen in the photo above. More proof to silence the global warming deniers-I fear for the widespread implications of the death of so much coral. Can it be reversed?-the film hints that they are looking into farming new coral to replace the coral that has already died, but I fear we are still years form that technology. The people in the film seem more hopeful than they should be-I hope they are right.

David Cronenberg's Videodrome (1983) is something of a cult classic and recently got the Criterion treatment for a new Bluray edition. I is an exploration of the effects of television on people and was somewhat inspired by Marshall McLuhan. James Woods plays Max Renn, the seedy owner of a local cable TV station that plays soft-porn and other graphic material. He is searching for the next big thing that will make his station profitable, when he meets another TV personality Nicki Brand (Deborah Harry) and starts to investigate S&M, which coincides with a snuff transmission that a pirate engineer has discovered on the airwaves. Little by little Max becomes infected by the TV images he has been watching. I think Cronenberg has packed a lot of ideas in this film-it still seems relevant today. The Criterion treatment includes: audio commentary - David Cronenberg w/ director of photography with Mark Irwin, audio commentary - actors James Woods and Deborah Harry, Camera (2000), a short film by Cronenberg, Forging the New Flesh, a half-hour documentary, Effects Men, an audio interview. Bootleg Video: the complete footage of Samurai Dreams, Fear on Film, a roundtable discussion from 1982, original theatrical trailers and promotional featurette, stills gallery featuring rare behind-the-scenes production photos, and a booklet featuring essays by Carrie Rickey, Tim Lucas, and Gary Indiana.

July 26, 2017

I finally got around to seeing Dennis Villeneuve's powerful film adaptation of the play Incendies (2010). It was a mesmerizing film from the opening where some young boys are having their hair cut by soldiers as Radiohead's "You and Whose Army" is played in the background. The film moves back and forth through time to slowly reveal the story of Narwal Marwan (Lubna Azabal). In the present she has died and left letters to her fraternal twin son and daughter asking them to find their father and brother in the Middle Eastern country from which she comes from-it is not specified, but it may be Lebanon. Thus, Villeneuve has created an effective thriller with a shocking conclusion.

Chawan, a new healthy restaurant has opened under Asagaya station train tracks in the Beans complex with a few other shops. I got the basil gapoa rice salad with shrimp gratin and several side dishes like pickles, fish salad and miso soup-all for ¥1180.